The following is a post by me, made about 2/20/97,
in response to a post by Daibhidh on one of the anarchy news groups
in which he quoted extensively from an FAQ which attacked what the
authors believed to be my views on medieval Iceland. The FAQ in
question had been up for some time in a succession of versions; I had
criticized the corresponding section of an earlier one at some length
in earlier
posts.

"You" in this response refers to the authors of
the FAQ Daibhidh is quoting, not to Daibhidh:

<5es8rv$2qu@news.acns.nwu.edu>,
dtn307@nwu.edu (Daibhidh) wrote:

> excerpted from The Anarchist Theory
FAQ

>
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/

>

> As William Ian Miller points out

I'm glad to see that the authors of this FAQ have
finally discovered Miller, thus providing them with someone
sympathetic to left wing political views who actually knows something
about saga period Iceland, unlike the authors of the original version
of the FAQ, who were making it up as they went along. Now if they'll
just read him, instead of searching for convenient quotes, they might
learn something. Those interested in a still more expert voice on my
side of the argument are referred to Jesse Byock's books.

> Kropotkin in Mutual Aid indicates that Norse
society, from which the settlers

> in Iceland came,

> had various "mutual aid" institutions,
including communal land ownership

> (based around what he

> called the "village community") and the thing
(see also Kropotkin's The State:

> Its Historic

> Role for a discussion of the "village
community"). It is reasonable to think

> that the first settlers in

> Iceland would have brought such institutions
with them. This is confirmed by

> the Encyclopaedia

> Britannica, which notes that these settlers
claimed large areas of land for

> themselves and their

> families, whereas later settlers founded
smaller households. Thus the original

> settlers would have

> owned the land as family (i.e. communal)
holdings, divided up between kin-folk

> according to use.

Read the sagas. Early settlers, some of them
fleeing the unification of Norway by Harald Haarfagr, found Iceland
almost empty, and claimed substantial chunks of coastal land (the
interior is mostly uninhabitable). Later land was scarcer; the
original settlers sometimes gave away chunks of their (presumably
unused) land to new arrivals, thus getting neighbors. The holdings
were "communal" only in the sense that the settlers came as extended
families, with the patriarch (or, in one notable case, matriarch)
parcelling out the holdings and continuing to play a major role in
family affairs. There were no villages, and I have yet to see any
reference in the sagas to communal land ownership. Perhaps you can
point one out.

> Miller points out that it would be wrong to
impose capitalist ideas and

> assumptions onto Icelandic

> society:

> "Inevitably the attempt was made to add early
Iceland to the number of regions

> that

> socialized people in nuclear families within
simple households. . . what the

> sources tell us

> about the shape of Icelandic householding
must compel a different conclusion."

> [Op. Cit., p.

> 112]

> In other words, Kropotkin's analysis of
communal society is far closer to the

> reality of Medieval

> Iceland than David Friedman's attempt in The
Machinery of Freedom to turn it

> into a capitalist

> utopia.

1. Are you arguing that left anarchy is, and
anarcho-capitalism is not, consistent with a society where the
parents of adult children continue to exercise considerable influence
(control is a bit too strong, given some of what happens in the
sagas) over them? That is all he is describing. You typically have a
couple and their married adult children living near each other, and
most of the time cooperating.

2. As it happens, I don't describe Iceland as
either a utopia or anarcho-capitalist, as you would know if you had
actually read either the book or the JLS
article (which is what Miller is
responding to, incidentally); the latter is available on my web site,
as you apparently know (you excerpt quotes from it later). I argue
that it had some of the features of anarcho-capitalism, and thus
provides evidence that some of the arguments against
anarcho-capitalism are wrong.

> It is

> these Sagas on which David Friedman (in The
Machinery of Freedom) bases his

> claim that

> Medieval Iceland is a working example of
"anarcho" capitalism.

It is a good idea to read things before making
public statements about what they say, instead of deducing what they
must say from third hand accounts. Perhaps you can quote where in
_The Machinery of Freedom_ I assert that "Medieval Iceland is a
working example of 'anarcho' capitalism."

What irritates me about this FAQ is not its
conclusion--with enough iterations and a little effort actually
reading the literature, it could end up as a reasonable
counterargument against my position. It is the irresponsibility of
people who apparently do not care whether what they publish is true.
If you go back to the early versions of the FAQ, you find a series of
entirely made up facts--Icelandic Jarls (a Norwegian position with no
Icelandic equivalent), Icelandic housecarls (an Anglo-Saxon position
with no Icelandic equivalent), etc. Apparently the authors' approach
is to make up their facts, then correct the more blatant errors after
I point them out, on the theory that they will eventually, by a
process of elimination, come up with an account true to the
facts.

> Hence we can see that the artisans and
farmers would seek the "protection" of

> a godi, providing

> their labour in return.

You are now back with imagination. Where in the
primary sources do you have accounts of artisans and farmers trading
labor for protection? Where, for that matter, do you have any account
of anything describable as a class of artisans? What do you think
your imaginary artisans were doing?

>This system, however, had an obvious

> (and fatal) flaw. As

> the Encyclopaedia Britannica points out:

>

> "The position of the godi could be bought and
sold, as well as inherited;

> consequently, with

> the passing of time, the godord for large
areas of the country became

> concentrated in the

> hands of one man or a few men. This was the
principal weakness of the old form

> of

> government: it led to a struggle of power and
was the chief reason for the

> ending of the

> commonwealth and for the country's submission
to the King of Norway."

There is one minor detail missing from this
telescopic summary--the dates. Norse settlement of Iceland started
about 870. The legal instituions were established in 930. The civil
conflict that led to the final collapse began about 1200. Or in other
words, despite its "fatal" flaw, the system functioned reasonably
smoothly for longer than the U.S. has so far existed.

> As protection did not come free, it is not
suprising that a godi tended to

> become rich. This would

> enable him to enlist more warriors, which
gave him even more social power (in

> Kropotkin's words,

> "the individual accumulation of wealth and
power").

1. According to the Icelandic sources,
Chieftainship was honor, not income.

2. Why did this only start happening two centuries
after the system was set up?

3. Precisely where do you find references to
thingmen paying the Chieftains for their "protection?" Why do you
think that in a system of competitive chieftains, chieftainship would
be any more profitable than any other activities? Indeed, why do you
identify the role of the chieftains with selling protection at all?
What the chieftain owned was a link to the legal system--who your
chieftain was determined what court you could be sued in.
"Protection," more precisely enforcement of legal rights, was
provided by coalitions which might be centered on a chieftain but
didn't have to be. A farmer several of whose adult sons were good
fighters had a considerable amount of force at his disposal--we're
talking about a society with a small and dispersed population. A
coalition of a few such fighters might be just as effective at rights
enforcement as the local chieftain.

4. Where, prior to the final period of breakdown
post 1200 (the Sturlunga period), do you find references to
chieftains "enlisting" warriors? Any warriors at all? If you had read
the sagas, or even paid attention to Miller, you would have figured
out that the people doing the fighting are farmers--some of whom went
viking in their youth and thus acquired some military experience. To
find professional warriors, you have to go to Norway or
England.

> Soon, artisan production

> became a form

> of wage labour (as the "protection" fees had
to be paid)

You are making all of this up. To begin with, what
artisan protection are you talking about--who is making what? Second,
what protection fees are you talking about? The only payment
associated with the link between Thingman and Godi (chieftain) is the
Thingtax, which is a contribution that thingmen who don't go to the
Allthing that year make to the expenses of those who do.

> pestilences, [farmers]. . . began to repay
their debts, they fell into servile

> obligations

> towards the protector of the territory.
Wealth undoubtably did accumulate in

> this way, and

> power always follows wealth." [Mutual Aid, p.
131].

Or in other words, you are making up your facts to
fit what Kropotkin wrote about what happened in a different society.
What were the "servile obligations" in Iceland--a society which had
no class of serfs?

> This change from a

> communalistic,

> anarchistic society to a statist,
propertarian one can also be seen from this

> quote from an article on

> Iceland by Hallberg Hallmundsson in the
Encyclopaedia Americana, which

> identifies wealth

> concentration in fewer and fewer hands as
having been responsible for

> undermining Icelandic

> society:

>

> "During the 12th century, wealth and power
began to accumulate in the hands of

> a few

> chiefs, and by 1220, six prominent families
ruled the entire country. It was

> the internecine

> power struggle among these families, shrewdly
exploited by King Haakon IV of

> Norway,

> that finally brought the old republic to an
end."

You gave one end of the time period--but omitted
to mention that it was during the early 10th century that the system
was set up. 1220 is almost three hundred years after the
establishment of the legal system in 930. You also refer to a change
from a "communalistic, anarchistic society," despite the fact that
the encyclopedia article you quote says nothing at all about such a
society. It is describing the change from a private property society
where the equivalent of political power is widely dispersed to one
where it is concentrated.

> The

> attempt to ignore the facts that private
property creates rulership (i.e. a

> monopoly of government

> over a given area) and that monarchies are
privately owned states does

> Friedman's case no good.

> In other words, the system of private
property has a built in tendency to

> produce both the ideology

> and fact of Kingship - the power structures
implied by Kingship are reflected

> in the social relations

> which are produced by private property.

Sure--just start with private property and wait
three or four centuries and you might (or might not) get kingship. I
can just imagine your explaining this to the original settlers--who
fled Norway to get away from monarchy, and delibertately set up a
political system based on Norwegian institutions, including not only
private property but private property in the equivalent of seats in
congress--with the King omitted. And maintained it for several
centuries.

> Fiedman is also aware that an "objection [to
his system] is that the rich (or

> powerful) could

> commit crimes with impunity, since nobody
would be able to enforce judgment

> against them.

> Where power is sufficiently concentrated this
might be true; this was one of

> the problems

> which led to the eventual breakdown of the
Icelandic legal system in the

> thirteenth century.

> But so long as power was reasonably
dispersed, as it seem to have been for the

> first two

> centuries after the system was established,
this was a less serious problem."

> [Op. Cit.]

>

> Which is quite ironic. Friedman is claiming
that "anarcho"-capitalism will

> only work if there is an

> approximate equality within society!

That is not what I am claiming, as you could
probably figure out if you read the article trying to understand it
instead of looking for convenient passages to excerpt. It would also
be obvious if you were at least moderately familiar with conventional
economic theory--whether or not you agreed with it, you could at
least understand other people who did. A competitive market does not
require egalitarianism, just lots of producers. In the article you
are quoting, I think just before or after the passage you are
quoting, I explain the mechanism by which poor people could get their
rights enforced. What is necessary is not that everyone be equal, but
that there be a substantial number of potential enforcers.

> But this state of affairs is one most

> "anarcho"-capitalists claim

> is impossible. They claim there will always
be rich and poor. But inequality

> in wealth will also

> become inequality of power. When "actually
existing" capitalism has become

> more free market the

> rich have got richer and the poor
poorer.

This is not, as it happens, true, but that would
be another long argument.

As you would know if you had actually read _The
Machinery of Freedom_, I argue that the stability of the
anarcho-capitalist institutions I argue for there depends on
economies of scale in law enforcement being low enough so that you
have a substantial number of competing enforcement agencies. The
corresponding condition was met in Iceland for about the first two
hundred and fifty years, judging by what we can tell of how the
system was working. The question of why it eventually failed is an
interesting one, but handwaving about the inevitable concentration of
wealth under capitalism doesn't help answer it.

> Friedman is aware of the reasons why
"anarcho"-capitalism will

> become rule by the rich

> but perfers to believe that "pure" capitalism
will produce an egalitarian

> society!

You are exercising your imagination again. Both
halves of the quoted statement are claims about my beliefs, and both
are wrong.

> In the case of the

> commonwealth of Iceland this did not happen -
the rise in private property

Private property existed from the begining of the
system

> was

> accompanied by a

> rise in inequality and this lead to the
breakdown of the Republic into